The present invention relates to Internet browsing and in particular multiple parties browsing the Internet collaboratively.
Internet browsing is a well-known concept. In the typical browsing scenario, a user of a personal computer (xe2x80x9cPCxe2x80x9d) establishes a connection to the Internet (from the user""s PC) through an Internet Service Provider (xe2x80x9cISPxe2x80x9d), such as ATandT WorldNet Service(trademark). As part of establishing this connection, the user runs one of the many available Internet browser software programs, such as Netscape Navigator(trademark) or Microsoft Internet Explorer(trademark), on the PC. The user is presented with an initial xe2x80x9cpagexe2x80x9d of information from an Internet server, usually associated with the user""s ISP. This page is a display of a document communicated from the server in accordance with the well-known hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). The document is expressed in hypertext mark-up language (HTML) which is used by the browser in displaying the page (i.e., the document).
A displayed document may contain many elements such as text and images. The document may also contain xe2x80x9chyperlinksxe2x80x9d to other pages on the Internet, as is well-known in the art. These hyperlinks may be selected by the user with use of the user""s computer mouse. As is well-known, a hyperlink may be an object in the document (e.g., text, an image, a graphical design, etc.) which is associated with another document on the Internet (either accessible from the same or different server; a hyperlink might also represent a portion of the current document for display). When a hyperlink makes reference to another document, the selection of that hyperlink triggers the browser software""s transmission of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) over the Internet. The URL specifies, among other things, the address of the document the user wishes to retrieve for viewing. The server containing the document identified by the URL returns the document to the user""s PC through use of the user""s Internet Protocol (IP) address, which the server received along with the URL. A user can thus follow a type of trail, from one document to the next, through the selection of hyperlinks.
Browsing the Internet is a popular way for individuals to gather information on virtually any topic. However, the present system of Internet browsing is designed around a model of users browsing individuallyxe2x80x94that is, a single PC receiving a sequence of documents defined according to a sequence of hyperlinks selected at the PC. While two or more persons can sit at a single PC and together experience a sequence of documents corresponding to a sequence of selected hyperlinks, current browsers do not provide for collaborative browsing among users at different PCs.
The present invention is directed to a technique for collaborative browsing among users at two or more different PCs. In an illustrative system in accordance with the present invention, copies of selected URLs are shared among collaborating PCs, each of which uses the URL to retrieve the corresponding document. In this system, a PC is configured to select hyperlinks for itself and one or more other PCs. Each URL corresponding to a selected hyperlink is communicated via the Internet (using standard Internet protocols) to a server. The server broadcasts the URL to the collaborating PCs each of which retrieves the corresponding document in conventional fashion. The server knows the IP addresses of the collaborating PCs through a collaboration set-up process which occurs in advance of the actual collaborative browsing session.